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REPORT
A World in Transition: New Challenges for Gender Justice
A Biannual Gender and Development Network (GADNET) Conference,
Centre for Global Gender Studies Gothenburg University, Sweden
in collaboration with
Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), India
Supported by SIDA/ SAREC
13-15 December 2006, New Delhi, India
Compiled & Edited by:
Hauwa Mahdi
Centre for Global Gender Studies (CGGS)
School of Global Studies (SGS)
Gothenburg University
Seminariergatan 1
Box 700
SE 405 50 Gothenburg
Sweden
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A World in Transition: New Challenges for Gender Justice Conference
Table of Contents
1. Conference
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Plenary Session
2. Report on Sub-themes
2.1 Political Restructuring & Gender Justice: Citizenship and Agency, by:
Anupama Roy
2.2 Gender Justice, Violence and Conflict, by: Vasanthi Raman
2.3 Body Politics, Sexuality and Rights, by: Malavika Karlekar
2.4 Globalisation, Gender and Livelihoods by: Indu Agnihotri
2.5 Culture, Media and Identity Politics by: Kumud Sharma
2.6 Panel Six: Global Feminist Knowledge Production by, Mary E. John
3. Concluding Comments
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A World in Transition: New Challenges for Gender Justice Conference
1. Conference
1.1 Introduction
The Second Conference on the overall theme of gender justice was held in Delhi, India.
Though global in perspective, it had focus on Asia. Delegates from Sri Lanka, China,
Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and of course India, participated in the Conference. There was
a strong representation of GADNET members and Indian women’s studies scholars. The
Conference aimed to explore the complex underpinnings of the concept of ‘gender
justice’, which is inextricably linked to the notion of social and economic justice.
Gender, class, caste, race, religion and ethnicity remain fundamental to the theory and
practice of ‘gender justice’.
The Conference had six sub-themes:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Political Restructuring and Gender Justice: Citizenship and Agency
Gender Justice, Violence and Conflict
Body Politics, Sexuality and Rights
Globalisation, Gender and Livelihoods
Culture, Media and Identity Politics
Global Feminist Knowledge Production
There were nine key-note speakers. The Conference began with a plenary session where
Vina Mazumdar, Jayati Gosh and Ritu Menon made three of the nine keynote
presentations. Each of the three presentations dealt with some of the broad themes on
which justice for women must be anchored: globalisation and its ideology, work and
labour, and the law. The other six keynotes were presented at the start of each of the subthemes. Each session also had a facilitator and a moderator. The Conference concluded
with a wrap-up session with brief presentations by facilitators of the various sub-themes
followed by a general discussion.
The Conference was filmed on video by a team from the Swedish network, GADNET.
The film team also interviewed some of the delegates individually.
1.2 Plenary Session
The first presenter, Vina Mazumdar started off the conference with a speech entitled,
“Gender Justice in the twenty-first century”. She begins with a critical appraisal of the
title of the Conference encapsulated in the use of concepts “gender” and “transition”. The
use of such concepts outside their ideological anchoring may not serve the purpose of
understanding women’s demand for justice. For one, the world is always in transition;
and secondly, we could just say we seek “better opportunities for women to access their
human rights and carry out their responsibilities - to themselves and to society.” Ideology
she asserts is important not only in economic, social and gender studies but also to the
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realities women live - especially in the ever escalating violence around them. She
exemplifies the significance of ideology by juxtaposing two different perceptions of how
the role of the state can uphold human rights. One perception of how human rights can be
upheld is where the state is required to disengage from the economy to allow market
forces to freely dictate how it develops. In this view, there is an inherent goodness in the
free market. The other perspective points at the pre-1970s economic policies of states,
where both the market and the state were engaged in production, and how the same states
have failed since the 1980s because of the adoption of more free market policies.
Vina Muzumdar drew attention to the role of globalisation as a dimension of the free
market in the intensification of global poverty and women’s discrimination. The neoliberalist dimension of globalisation, which strengthens private property and the
privatisation of state institutions, is obscured by the unqualified use of concepts. Since
economic injustice is as potent as political, historical or cultural factors in the eruption of
wars, the predominance of neo-liberalism in the globalisation process has endangered
women’s human rights further. Consequently, the pursuit of gender justice must
constitute a part of the negotiations in the varied dimensions of globalisation, if the
process is to have any positive impact on women’s lives. Citing many researchers, she
shows how the neglect of women’s interests in neo-liberalist programmes and other
international negotiations since the new millennia is eroding some of the gains women
made in the 1980s. She concluded by proposing areas of research which could foster our
understanding of globalisation: why the poorest countries of the world are listed as the
least developed and yet kinder to the female of the species; why the richest countries of
the world are keen to invest in the production of armaments and; and lastly, feminists
across the world should begin to investigate the connection between wars and corporate
profit.
The second speaker, Jayati Gosh, went into a more detailed exposition of specific ways
by which globalisation is intensifying poverty in the South. In “How is women’s work
changing?: issues and trends”, Jayati Gosh discusses three aspects of globalisation which
have an impact on if and how women work in the South, especially in Asia. The three
aspects are: the global underutilisation of labour, the flow of money from the
underdeveloped to the developed world and the creation of new markets through
intellectual property patents. These three, Gosh shows, have created marked inequality
even in China and India, which are considered “growth centres”, than ever before. The
underutilisation of labour is marked in the changing behaviour and employment patterns
in the South such as high unemployment, a feature that is new in the underdeveloped
economies. Other indicators of the underutilisation of labour are the presence of open
unemployment, self-employment, and increase in migration in search of jobs. The
migration of women in search of work is an unprecedented phenomenon. Most of these
trends had been non-existent, especially among women in Asia, but which are now facts
that indicate women’s self-awareness of themselves as part of the labour force. A gender
division of labour among the new migrants seems to have emerged whereby women tend
to work in the less secure service industry such as care and housekeeping. Men work as
semi-skilled workers in sectors such as construction, which are better paid and more
stable. This “rampant capitalism” in Asia, according Gosh, does not lead to higher
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employment as it did in Europe in the 18th century or the USA in the 19th. On the
contrary, in Asia, paid employment has been drastically reduced in absolute terms since
the 1990s.
Jayati Gosh shows with statistical data that the flow of wealth to the developed world,
especially to the United States, occurs because both governments and individuals from
the South make their savings in the developed countries. In addition, debt repayments and
interests paid to the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) adds
to the flow of money from the underdeveloped countries to the developed. Further, since
2002, the international patent situation has also meant the growth of new markets in the
underdeveloped countries with the consequent transfer of the profits to the North. A
production chain has evolved in the era of globalisation, which enables multinational
companies produce goods at a fraction of the cost, raising their profit margins while those
at the bottom of the chain in the South face a rise in their impoverishment. The state in
the underdeveloped countries is complicit in the expansion of poverty. Most noticeable is
that the state retreats from the provision of utilities and other conditions that enhance a
better life for the generality of the people while imposing on them demands that sustain
rampant capitalism. These conditions have fuelled the huge movement of women, the rise
in their self-employment and imposed new forms of unpaid labour and longer working
hours on them.
In the all-permeating conditions created by globalisation in countries of the South, five
issues of gender justice need to be addressed seriously and urgently:
a. What happens to the basic rights of migrants?
b. How do you define labour rights for the self-employed?
c. How do you fight for the human rights of the women workers in the production chain?
d. How do you address the double burden of women?
e. How do you deal with the mental bondage created by the belief that women must
become retailers of multinational company goods?
The third speaker of the plenary session, Ritu Menon called her presentation, “Above the
law? State immunity in state violence against women”. In this paper, Ritu Menon goes
into the social cost of poverty especially in the area of the law. She implicates the Indian
state in two types of violence against women: one, which the state condones through its
inaction and the other type, meted out directly by its agents on women. The address
focused on how the interconnection between “public and private patriarchies” has
entailed interconnected forms of violence, which stretch from the home to the streets and
back.
Ritu Menon argues that the patriarchal ideology in all societies creates a systemic
structure rather than that of men’s rule over women structure. Taking the Indian society
as an example, she argues that here as in other societies, the general violence in society is
sustained with the “consent” of women as of men. By their inclusion in that system
women’s solidarity as a gender, is dispersed in favour of their loyalties to their class,
caste, family and so on. This systemic nature of patriarchy hides the type of violence,
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which is meted out specifically on women and is perpetrated by men irrespective of class
or caste, in the public domain as well as in the private. With many case examples, she
shows concretely how the public and private boundaries are easily blurred in
interventions aimed at resolving conflicts, both between individuals and between
communities. For example, where a cross caste marriage is the problem, individual
family members, village elders and/or panchayats sometimes use violence to enforce
what they believe to be the right decision for the individuals in the case. Action by such
groups is often tantamount to usurping “the justice dispensing function of the state”. Yet,
such appropriation of power by non-state agents is sometimes sanctioned by law or
condoned by the state’s inaction and institutions such as the courts.
The other type of violence that blurs the separation of public/private domains in India are
directly meted by agents of state on women. The conduct of law enforcement agencies,
especially the police, in conflict zones is one of those cases amply demonstrated. Taking
examples from many incidents of state and local communities of India such as Gujarat,
Kashmir and Manipur, Ritu Menon shows how women have been turned into the
battleground of conflicts between regional or local groups and the Indian state. She shows
that in all three states the Indian police have in a number of cases meted violence, both
sexual and otherwise, on women in these areas as an extension of their battles with
insurgents. When agents of the law display such impunity, the liberal idea that
individuals are right bearing in a civil society appears questionable. Ritu Menon
postulates that the violence meted by the agents of state on women is nothing short of an
institutionalisation of the male dominance and violation of women in the domestic
sphere. The question is what should women and feminists do in the face of such brazen
abuses in which agencies and agents of the state have masculine attributes that encourage
the violation of women. Feminists should, she proposes, constructively seek to remove
the "Male” in the state “even if it entails recasting it entirely.”
2. Report on Sub-themes
2.1 Political Restructuring & Gender Justice: Citizenship and Agency, by:
Anupama Roy
Six papers were presented in sub-theme panel one on ‘Political Restructuring and Gender
Justice: Citizenship and Agency’. The papers presented were diverse, and approached
the question of citizenship and agency from different vantage points. Yet there were
some common threads that ran through them all, giving them a cohesive analytical
framework. The relationship between the state and civil society, how shifts in the
conception of civil society have bearing on the nature of collective interventions, the kind
of politics such interventions have produced, especially the possibilities of articulating an
active, plural and gender-just citizenship on different planes, and tensions between the
meta-narratives of political and economic restructuring at the global level, and their
manifestation at the local levels, are themes that bind all the presentations.
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The latter was emphasised in particular by Oishik Sarkar in his paper on women’s rights
and the crises of international human rights interventions. The meta-narrative of the
international human rights regime, particularly in the nineties, reproduced the
hierarchised universe that had justified colonial domination, by giving centrality to
sexual-violence, and in the process essentialising culture with reference to the ‘global
south’. Reminiscent of the colonial rescue-drama, the ‘native’ woman figured in the
narrative as ‘the respectable unitary peripheral subaltern subjects’ to be rescued from
their own cultures, having regressive implications for plural citizenship and the human
rights of women.
While Sarkar brought out the tensions between citizenship, state-sovereignty, and human
rights regimes, the realm of political possibilities for the women’s movement and a
gender just-citizenship was explored by other papers in specific contexts. The paradox of
addressing issues concerning women’s political and social citizenship to the State that
embodies the institutionalised forms of gender-injustice was examined by Christina
Alnevall. It was this contradiction in citizenship - the fusion of the nation and the state,
where the nation embodies the hegemonic cultural forms, and the state - governmentality,
practices of rule and reasons of state that determine what lies within the domain of the
state and what is an imperative state function to maintain or secure the state – which was
significant for any analysis of citizenship and agency. A way out of the paradox, for
Alnevall was the practice of extended and relational citizenship, embodying the
cosmopolitan and dialogical aspects of citizenship, thus challenging through such an
extension the authority of the state and its hegemonic conflation with the nation.
Alnevall unravelled in some detail the manner in which the women’s movement in
Mexico has addressed issues of women’s rights addressing such as issues of protection,
discrimination and violence.
On the other hand, Elin Bjarnegard explored recruitment practices in electoral
constituencies in Thailand. Elin Bjarnegard’s paper shows how in their organizational
structures as well as in their everyday functioning, political parties embodied and
reproduced a masculinist politics. The monopoly of the public space she argues was
sustained through the increasing technicalities of nomination procedures as well as the
weight of tradition, both of which function as ‘gatekeepers’. It was also significant how
the co-existence of specific traditional forms of political patronage and relationships like
‘clientelism’, coexisted with modern political structures. In that co-existence they
reproduce static hierarchies and asymmetries, where groups such as women are excluded
from access to political resources. The same process obscures the possibilities of radical
political change.
The question, how political practices can set in motion processes of change, emerged as
significant in all papers. In particular, the experiences of relative successes of different
kinds of women’s organisations in articulating a multilayered, transversal and active
citizenship was a significant concern. Sidsel Hansson and Bidyut Mohanty raised this
concern through their examination of women’s mobilisation around issues of
development through self-help groups in the Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj districts of
Orissa, India. They examined how mobilisation held out the promise of embodying
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critical acts that dismantle closures and build networks manifesting a transversal practice
of citizenship. They also indicated areas where active citizenship was blurred by
indifference to political participation in local bodies and NGOs dependency, problems of
long-term sustainability, and finally their potential for dismantling traditional caste-tribe
boundaries.
Edme Dominguez also examined the issue of active gender-just citizenship through
feminist transversal practice. She explored the unfolding of trans-border networking by
worker and women’s organisations as networks of resistance in a globalised space
marked by neo-liberal policies.
While examining global restructuring and its
corresponding modes of resistance, the paper showed how practices of transversal
resistance addressed the tensions between labour and feminist concerns. Sometimes,
transversal resistance also reproduced the power structures that the transnational
solidarity would have wanted to roll back and overturn. Issues of internal organisation,
decision making, issues of autonomy, and the kind of politics this spelt out for the
women’s movement was highlighted.
Rosalba Icaza Garza’s paper in particular interlinked issues of civil society and
democracy and the politics of global trade regimes, focusing on local responses in the
form of economic restructuring, political democratization and political participation.
While exploring the ever-changing context in which the transnational networks are taking
place, and their emphasis on the relational framework of citizenship through dialogues,
Garza pointed out also the contests which formed ‘parallel moments’ in the thematic
between gender and worker issues. The changing forms and processes of ‘citizenship
building’ she argued was manifest in two co-existing ways in which the engendering and
democratisation was being sought – through consultation and working out of negotiated
spaces within the existing frameworks and on the other hand, through radical de-linking
or a politics of de-globalisation. The issue of modes of articulating citizenship and
processes of democratisation through engendering citizenship at specific layers of
transition in a globalised world provided, thereby, a cohesive framework for all the
papers in the panel.
Altogether eight papers, each dealing with agency and citizenship in different parts of the
South, were presented at this session. The discussion, which arose from these papers all
centre in different degrees on the co-existence of Hannah Arendt’s Radical Evil (RE) and
Human Rights in the discourses of gender justice (HR). Thus, the broad discussion is
about how policies and political structures within communities, nation-states and
translationally claim to redress injustice and yet exclude women from appropriating such
opportunities. The dichotomy of evil and rights was debated in different ways. For
example, one discussion was about how the international refugee law subverts the 1951
UNHR articulation by excluding gender discrimination as a basis for obtaining refugee
status. Not until 1979 did gender discrimination enter into the laws of the UN, and only in
1985 did violence enter the discourse as opposed to discrimination. Yet, through the
many debates and laws at different international forums, not until 1993 did the Vienna
Tribunal adopt the “Women’s Right is Human Rights” position.
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What do these issues and positions on discrimination within nation-states and at
international discourse mean. The manner in which the discourse is conducted often leads
to a view where the discrimination of women in particular is seen as a sign of
backwardness and a distinct feature of Southern cultures. Yet, even though the
discrimination against women as a condition for refugee status was not recognised, the
discourse generated to stem the tide of discrimination itself turned into a form of
discrimination against nations of the South as hostile societies for women.
2.2 Gender Justice, Violence and Conflict, by: Vasanthi Raman
Four papers were presented in this session and all of these were about India. Suruchi
Thapar Bjorkert’s paper titled “Conceptualising Social (In) Justice in India”, dealt with
the gender dimension of the violence against the dalits in northern India, specifically in
the state of Bihar. Her focus was on the issue of dalit women taking up arms against the
state and upper caste violence. A major reason outlined for women taking to violence was
that many dalit women and girls were the only survivors in the their families due to
various reasons, both economic and political, and militant groups arm these women for
self-defence. She problematised the notion of women as victims and instead saw the
phenomenon of armed dalit women as a manifestation of agency, which contested
essentialist stereotypes of women. Simultaneously, she also stated that women armed
themselves to fulfil their ethic of care. The discussion that followed around the paper
drew attention to certain methodological lacunae, pointing out that the case of women
arming themselves was not a new phenomenon in India. There were examples from the
Tebhaga movement and the Telengana movement of the 1940s, and the Naxalbari
movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, all of these being led by communist
revolutionaries. Besides, the discussion also highlighted the fact that women were armed
as part of the wider movement where their gender identity was subsumed in the broader
struggle for land and state power, which the communist revolutionaries saw as essential
for radical social transformation. The arming of dalit women in Bihar, too, was not a
spontaneous one, but was part of the wider strategy of the militant groups to confront
both the armed power of the state and the private armies of the upper caste landed
elements. Besides, here, too, it was not so much a question of women’s identity as that of
dalit identity, which motivated the women to bear arms.
Uma Chakravarti’s paper is titled, “The Law as a Horizon: Towards a Feminist
Jurisprudence”. In it, she raised the critical question of how to conceptualize the search
for justice centring around issues of sexual violence, particularly when the state declares
“war” on its citizens. The paper emphasized the need for an expansion of the legal
framework. The incident in Gujarat 2002 brought back the feminist engagement with the
law, especially in relation to sexual violence. At the time of the partition of India and
Pakistan, the legal recognition of sexual violence was framed around religious and
national boundaries. Internationally, it is only after Bosnia and Rwanda that the questions
of sexual violence got to the foreground. In India, Gujarat 2002 brought back the
engagement with international law as also the question of command responsibility, in
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situations when the state itself is complicit. The discussion that followed highlighted
certain issues like the question of interface between the universal and the particular in the
context of rights. The holocaust model was also discussed vis-à-vis Gujarat. In this
regard, it was argued that it is intent rather than numbers that is crucial in
conceptualisation.
The third paper, “Women’s Actions, Legal Institutions: Conceptualising the Rights
Discourse in Domestic Violence” by A. Suneeta, was based on a study of cases of
domestic violence and their institutional trajectory in Andhra Pradesh. The paper
challenged existing explanations, which emphasise the inadequate institutionalisation of
rights and inadequate individuation of women. She contends that women’s actions at the
site of existing institutions highlight an entire array of personal, political and social
resources, which need to be mobilized in order to access the rights that are being offered.
Thus, it was argued that there was a mismatch between women and institutions and the
need to go beyond the constructions of “victim woman” vs. “empowered woman”, the
latter being an emancipatory ideal. The paper argued that the rights framework, aligned
with citizenship discourses does not have the analytical space to take cognizance of how
women may act. The question of what it is that constitutes agency or empowerment in
cases of domestic violence was raised. Is it that only women who travel the long road to
seeking redress through formal institutions like the police or the courts be considered as
emancipated? The cases studied in a poor urban neighbourhood showed that women have
already broken their silence when they reach out to a whole range of informal networks,
ranging from family, kin, caste and neighbourhood networks such as mahila mandals
(local women’s organizations), before they go to the formal institutions to seek redress.
The last paper, “Voice and Visibility as a Means of Constructing Identities and Asserting
Rights”, by A. K. Jayshree dealt with the identities of sex workers. The paper dealt with
case studies of sex workers in Rajamundhry in Andhra Pradesh. Some of the questions
that the paper sought to answer through these case studies were: a) Can a woman identify
herself as a sex worker? b) Are they permanently in a victimized position? c) Is there
agency? Through the cases, the paper emphasized that sex-workers had multiple
identities and did play a variety of roles. Non-governmental organizations had played a
positive role in making sex- workers visible and organizing them to lobby for their rights.
Many of the women had emerged confidently as leaders and were not defensive about
their identity as sex-workers. In the discussion that followed, two critical issues emerged.
One related to the nature of sex-work and definitions around it. Can sex-work be likened
to any other form of work? Secondly, has this problematic arisen because of the
dominance of international funding agencies and their agendas relating to HIV Aids?
There was also a brief discussion around the proposed amendment to the ITPA which
would penalize the client and its similarity with the Swedish law.
2.3 Body Politics, Sexuality and Rights, by: Malavika Karlekar
In her keynote lecture entitled “On Body Politics, Sexualities and Rights”, Adriana OritzOrtega spoke of the Mexican case of the murder of women (feminicide), same sex
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marriage and abortion. She looked at the important role of feminist movements in Mexico
and the role of the right wing perspective in its different forms of institutionalisation. She
looks at the institutionalisation process from within three “forms of social relations”: 1)
women versus state, 2) feminist(s) movements versus national and international agencies
and 3) state versus conservative forces. Oritz-Ortega argues that the Mexican state had
been compelled by the changes that had taken place in the society - urbansition, women’s
voting right, the rise in the number of educated women and an impending economic crisis
- to institute laws and programmes as part of its national security policy since the early
1970s. The need for the state to deal with these problems necessitated a legislative
approach to the issues that concerned women. Thus, in spite of the tense relations
between them, the state and women’s movements had to communicate as of necessity.
The expansion of the feminist(s) since that time has encouraged them to expand their
demands, culminating in the institutionalisation of gender mainstreaming. For example,
of their four major concerns - gender-related violence, abortion and contraception,
freedom for sexual orientation and the inclusion of women in decision-making – at least
three of these issues had become the state’s concerns by the 1980s. Oritz-Ortega
concludes that feminists have recorded much success in streamlining gender. However,
they still face challenges in their gender deconstruction path, not least against the
Catholic Church, which is one of the cornerstones of women’s subordination in Mexico,
and the “gentlemen’s pacts” strategies in politics.
In “Outing Heteronormativity: Nation, Citizen, Feminist Disruptions”, Nivedita Menon
dealt with what she called counter-heteronormative discourse that challenged
heteronormativity and the institution of monogamous patriarchal marriage. With the
AIDS epidemic, discussions on sexuality have entered the public domain even if these are
mainly what she called prophylactic in nature. Nevertheless, there has been a
radicalisation of spaces and of discussions on hitherto taboo subjects in India. How then,
has feminist politics engaged with counter- heteronormative movements? In its early
years, the women’s movement was largely homophobic in nature – and whether lesbians
should be allowed to participate in March 8 demonstrations became a contested issue.
Increasingly, however, there are voices that recognise that the end of the women’s
movement is to constitute the subject, namely woman. This position became significant
when a Hijra claimed the right to contest a seat in Mumbai as a woman – and the election
was set aside by the High Court on grounds that a Hijra was not a woman. Going `over’
and `under’ what Menon calls the nation, she concludes that if the heterosexual family is
the corner-stone of the nation-state, then clearly it is necessary for feminist analysis to
challenge accepted notions of woman, sexuality and the family. There was some
discussion on the validity of naming different sexualities and of problematising concepts.
Interestingly, Naifei Ding in “ ‘Ghosts in the Heart’ – Women, Sexuality and Marriage”
also cited the Taiwanese family - based on a stereotyping of certain women as polygamy
and concubinage continue to flourish – as responsible for a perpetuation of the `good
woman’. She then discussed quotes from popular texts of the seventies and eighties – a
step above the English Mills and Boon genre as she said later – that are extremely
popular. The discussion looked at whether modernity should be interrogated and if so,
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how. There was a mention of the ongoing relevance of son preference and so on in the
context of the stereotypification of roles and relationships.
Anna-Britt Coe in “Reproductive Rights Advocacy – Opportunities and Constraints for
Civil Society Organisations in Peru” reiterated that the happy family norm persists in that
country and influences the middle-class women’s movement. Using resource
mobilisation theory, theories of political processes and multi-racial feminist theory, Coe
looked at civil society organisations (CSOs) and how they address the issue of
reproductive rights. One question was whether neighbouring South American countries
also viewed matters in a similar manner and Coe said that there was indeed a melding of
views across feminist movements in the region.
In “Abjection, Gender, and Development Discourse in Kerala”, J. Devika critiqued
developmentalism through the prism of women’s bodies and the right to health care. Her
main text was the recent Human Development Report that extols the state’s achievements
in large part explained by the success of the female sterilisation programme. It therefore
subscribes to the norms of the patriarchal family where the role of the woman is to
reproduce a limited number of healthy bodies. She said “the body is treated as devoid of
agency, a mere vehicle of the mind, a shell that holds a mind with the capacity for
rationality, predisposed towards the domestic domain”. Devika found that practically no
work is being done on woman’s occupational health – there being an almost obsessive
preoccupation with reproductive health. Again, almost two decades ago, a review of
studies on women’s health found the almost same preoccupation. The notion of
development hence is posed as a counterpoint to the development of woman as woman
and not merely as a reproducer
In her case study of virginity testing among the Sansi tribal groups of Rajasthan, Kanchan
Mother found a high incidence of violence against those who `failed’ the test. What
emerged in the discussion was that though the practice known as kookri was traditional,
the cultural practice of growing violence against them was on the increase. As expected,
jati panchayats (caste councils) reinforce patriarchal norms, and encourage oppression of
so-called offenders – often young girls in their teens – and there is no representation of
women in these local bodies.
In “Body Politics and Disabled Femininity”, Renu Addlakha looked at how women with
disability viewed notions of beauty and so on – bringing the discussion back full circle to
the construction of gender. She rightly pointed to the neglect of disability studies in the
Indian context and here the women’s movement was also not excluded from their limited
involvement in the issue. Through interesting vignettes gleaned from women with
different disabilities Addlakha was able to conclude that their comments fractures
normative notions of femininity, though in that case a result of specific subjectivities,
nevertheless pointing to the larger issue of the limitations of a unilineal view of sexuality,
femininity and also masculinity.
Monica Lindberg Falk’s paper is titled “Gender, Celibacy and HIV/AIDS in Thailand”.
The paper deals with the intersection between gender, Buddhism and HIV/AIDS. Her
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investigation shows that Buddhist monasteries are very much engaged in coping with the
disease in Thailand. For example, the monks establish meditation centres, offer
counselling services and run income-generating activities for people living with the
disease. Still, less Thai women monks are engaged in the services for the patients and
other religious functions than men. The distinction made between chastity and celibacy is
an important line of demarcation, where the latter state is considered a higher ascetic state
than chastity and therefore a male state. It seems Thai Buddhism has a system of
representation in which masculine values are ranked higher than feminine ones. Yet Thai
women are expected to seek chastity rather than celibacy, the latter state being a male
prerogative. Women who aspire to a lead a celibate life violate the ideal Thai gender
construct. Preventing women from practicing celibacy does not only restrict their ability
to attain the ascetic state, but also their ability to deal with concrete issues of inequality in
their daily lives.
A running theme of the papers in the session, whether from India, Taiwan, Mexico Peru,
or Thailand, is engagement with the stranglehold of the patriarchal family. This appears
to have been a constant area of concern since the 1980s. For instance, in the early 1990s,
in a study of violence against women, the unspoken credo of police personnel in charge
of resolving marital disputes was that the sanctity of the family was not to be challenged.
Even as they dealt with brutalised women, the police often offered homilies on how the
hearth and home should be maintained. In short, the speakers emphasised the continuance
of violence – overt and covert – while rights discourse has been more fragmented,
irrespective of country and community.
2.4 Globalisation, Gender and Livelihoods by: Indu Agnihotri
There were six papers presented. These were on very diverse themes and from a range of
perspectives, and organized by being grouped into two papers each. The title of papers
and paper presenters is as follows:
The keynote speaker for the panel, Jayati Ghosh had laid out the broad framework within
which the issue was discussed. This primarily focused on growing inequalities, increasing
poverty and the specific impact with regard to employment trends and women’s work in
view of the rapid changes. The papers presented approached these issues from diverse
perspectives. Some were in the nature of attempting alternative conceptual frameworks
while others were based on field studies, micro-level data analysis as well as analyzing
trends at the macro-level.
Sumi Krishna, in her paper “Biodiversity and Genderscapes: Re-visioning Livelihood
options in Global Times”, emphasized the need to explore new concepts, such as
genderscape and develop tools from below in order to capture the shifting relationship of
women, work and environment.
The paper by Ann Schlyter, “Who Can Sit and Eat? Zambian Elderly and Students on
Gendered Generational Support” on Zambia, was based on research and an interesting
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pedagogic exercise in which students attempted an inter-generational survey which
examined the life and experience of elders, especially of women. It specifically addressed
the prevalent cultural stereotype that ‘sons look after parents in their old age’. In reality,
daughters contributed most for the care of their aged parents. The study also shows that in
fact old women in Zambia have to continue to work and be productive in order to cope
with increasing poverty and care for HIV/AIDS orphans.
The paper on “Globalisation and Women’s Livelihoods: Comprehending Unpaid
Women’s Work since 1990s” by Neetha Pillai and Indrani Mazumdar directly addressed
issues of linkages with macro-policies which were pushing women out of paid
employment and increasing women’s unpaid work in the sphere of production. Analysing
the broad trends with regard to decline in women’s employment in the organized sector
and as cultivators in the agrarian sector, the paper took a close look at the push towards
‘self-employment’, which has been promoted as an option for women over the last
decade and more. They to argue, that in fact there is a clear indication that women’s
unpaid work is increasing. The authors argued for a critical examination of the notion that
globalization has led to the ‘feminization’ of work, at least in the Indian context.
Jaya Sharma and K.P. Soma’s paper on the “Changing Discourse on Gender in the
Context of the Self-Help Groups Paradigm” emphasized that micro-credit is today seen as
one of the means of strengthening livelihood and survival, with a special focus on
women. Arguing that there is a need to focus on the broader linkages of micro-credit and
Self Help Groups with patterns of globalization, the authors concluded that in fact microcredit has become a means of appropriating women’s spaces to extend the agenda of neoliberalism. There is a real need to re-appropriate this segment from pro-women’s
perspectives rather than allow it to become an instrument of advancing the agenda of
globalization.
From a different perspective, Sreelekha Nair approached the changing patterns of
employment and women’s migration in her paper “Globalisation and Livelihoods:
Perspectives of Women Nurses of Delhi”. The employment graph of women nurses has
undergone a significant shift in view of both the changing context of health care in India
as well as opportunities to migrate to other parts of the world. Whereas privatization of
health care in India has made it more difficult to negotiate the terms of work and wage
contracts within the country, there is also a persistent bias in the way nurses and their
work are viewed within the social hierarchy, including , the hierarchy within the medical
profession.
The fact that change, including change propelled by trends accompanying globalization,
can reinforce patriarchy and social stereotypes with regard to women was amply brought
out by another paper, by Ann Lindberg. Her paper focused on gender relations within
Kerala in the context of Muslim male migration to the Gulf. The inflow of money, as well
as the ideological influence of Pan-Islamism has brought in different kinds of changes in
the lives of women from the Mapillah community in Kerala, which has also through the
20th century, changed from being a matrilineal community to falling within the
mainstream patrilineal society. The paper touched on significant aspects with regard to
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formation and assertion of a homogeneous identity within the broader framework of
Islamisation.
Given the paucity of time, the relationship of the state as well as responses from the
women’s movement did not feature in the discussion in any specific way. However, the
papers touched on aspects, which reflected the interface of the state with patriarchy under
the aegis of globalization. In a larger sense, these did reflect concerns which the women’s
movement has been addressing in India and in other parts of the world.
2.5 Culture, Media and Identity Politics by: Kumud Sharma
In this sub-theme two key notes and five papers were presented. Since the sub-theme
covered a vast area, papers were diverse. Tejaswini Niranjana’s keynote paper “Gender
and Culture in the 21st Century” addressed the new challenges to the articulation of
gender-culture issues within feminist pedagogy especially in literary studies and history.
The challenge is more sharply visible where new generations of women and men who
may not have inherited the past historical struggles but are encountering the politics of
feminism informed by the debates on normative femininity and masculinity. The paper
also discussed the issue of women as negotiator with the dominant knowledge system.
Malathi de Alwis’s paper on ‘Tracing Absent Presence’ discussed the issue of forced
disappearances in Sri Lanka as the most insidious form of violence leaving behind
chronic mourners and their sufferings, anxieties and fears.
Of the five papers presented in this sub-theme, three reflected on the tensions between
Muslim women’s identity, their citizenship rights and their struggles for gender justice.
Sabiha Hussain’s presentation raised the issues of how Muslim women’s identity is
formed, who defines it and how it gets subsumed under the community identity. Taking
the Shah Bano case as a marker (which concerned the issue of maintenance to a divorced
Muslim woman) she discussed the conflicts between the claim of women’s right as a
citizen and the claims of cultural communities. Fundamentalists’ concerns for
community identity and women’s quest for individual identity are always at loggerheads.
Hauwa Mahdi’s paper on ‘Sharia Laws in Nigeria’ looked historically at the complex
discourse of religion and politics. The introduction of reformed Sharia laws in 2000,
political campaigns and negotiation for the new Constitution and expansion of Islamic
movements globally, reflect the complexity in interpretations and application of Islamic
laws. The post reform Sharia Law showed two distinct trends, what she called pro-sharia
Right and pro-sharia Left. The former believed in sharia as Divine, immutable law; the
left argued that Muslim Jurists have based their judgements on the varied practices
among Muslims.
The presentation from Sisters in Islam (SIS, Malaysia) explored the experiences of their
organization in challenging the patriarchal reading and implementation of Islamic laws.
The discourse on Islam in Malaysia is limited to what is considered as ‘permissible’ and
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‘authentically Islamic’. Sisters in Islam as an advocacy group is active in the areas of
public education, research, media advocacy and law reforms. The organization has faced
several challenges from judiciary and Shariat Criminal Offences Act, State policies and
laws, bureaucracy, quasi-government bodies, exclusivist organization, media and silences
of academics and public. The activities of SIS as a pressure group have widened the
discourse on law reform and created public spaces which forced the debate on civil
liberties and right to speak out.
Pamela Philipose’s paper also looked at the four areas of interventions i.e. personal law
reform, violence against women, political representation of women and skewed sex-ratio
in India’s population. She discussed how the gender discourse was constructed by the
media in post-75 period. She argued that 1990s was a turning point in the debate
following the political churning post-Babri Masjid demolition and the neo-liberal policies
adopted by the government. In the 90s, there was a conscious privileging of marketdriven context rather than a nuanced approach to gender issues. Media today is more
urban-centric, episodic, inconsistent and marked by information-gender divide.
Globalisation, market reforms and politics of caste and religious identity have gained
prominence. Gender coverage has been co-opted to serve the needs of the market.
Karen Gabriel’s paper on ‘Whose Mother (land)?: Some Issues in Theorising National
Identity’ focused on the concept of ‘motherhood’ in the narratives of nation-state in
mainstream Hindi Cinema. The main argument of the paper is that the gendering of the
nation in conventional political theory, in the discourses of the Hindu right or in
mainstream cinema are fed by specific cultural organizations of gender relations. The
metaphor of the ‘mother’ and the construction of history along ‘communal lines’ in
discourses on nationalism were examined. The presentation explored some of the
paradoxes of the Indian nation-state and argued that the plurality and heterogeneity of
India though extolled, is a basis of the crisis as it is in contestation with the notion of
nation and has generated several types of centrifugal nationalism.
2.6 Panel Six: Global Feminist Knowledge Production by, Mary E. John
This particular panel was the longest of all the panels, initially with as many as 11 paper
presenters, but which was reduced to 8 since, unfortunately, three speakers could not
come in the last minute. Overall, this panel was extremely interesting and wide-ranging,
and was quite “global” in its each, since the following countries figured in it: China,
Korea, India, Iran, Sweden, South Africa, and also, if indirectly, France and the USA.
This summary report will not go into the details of each presentation for reasons of
brevity, but rather concentrate on the broad issues and questions raised in the course of
the panel.
The keynote speaker for this panel, Prof. Kim Eunshil had already raised a number of
pertinent questions in her presentation, concerning the place of concepts of women,
gender and feminism in Korea and East Asia more broadly. The first paper in the panel
by Dongchao Min from China introduced the issue of “gender” as a travelling concept
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into mainland China after the Beijing women’s conference. Min is concerned with how
knowledge of feminism travels: from whom and to who does it travel? This presentation
is concerned with how the term “gender” travels throughout Chine. Studies of
globalization are mainly focused on the economic aspects; Min is looking at an aspect
often overlooked. Jie Gui or Connecting with the international track. China has had to
change its tracks – government, non-government etc – to fit with the global or
international community. For women in China, the UN Fourth World Conference on
Women in 1995 represented a turning point regarding the term “gender”. The period after
Thiamin Square in 1989 had been very difficult for feminist oriented scholars. But the
UN conference gave new legitimacy to gender. The All China Women’s Federation
(ACWF) tried to combine gender theory and Marxist theory on women. Its president
stated that Marxist theory of women was concerned with gender theory to enable a
discussion of equality between women and men. This was an important marker because
members of ACWF had tried to introduce feminism but this had been disregarded by the
leadership as bourgeoisie. However, the leadership did accept the term “gender”. The
1990s saw a surge of funding for gender studies from international donors working in
China. Finally, most key scholars have studied in the US or UK. In sum, the development
of Women’s/Gender Studies in China is intricately tied to globalization.
The word gender has two possible meanings in the Chinese language according to
Dongchao Ming:
a)
b)
Xingbie - sexual differences between men and women, within Chinese language
shehui xingbie – social and sexual differences between women and men, created
during the 1990s.
Her discussion highlighted the power dynamics that undergird transnational flows
between the West and China even where feminist concepts are concerned. She focused
on the role of international funding and the local strategies of organizations such as the
National Women’s Federation (more closely associated with the state) and the overseas
network of Chinese Women’s Studies scholars (more closely associated with students
and faculty located in the US).
Three challenges surround the gender discourse in China
The study of gender was introduced in the 1990s. ACWF is trying to evolve a new gender
theory, but at the same time, have questions about global feminism: who are they going
to connect with?
• The power relationship between global flows of feminist thought, publications,
activism should be revealed. The Chinese Society of Women’s Studies (CSWS), as an
overseas organization, is an outsider in the Chinese context.
• What are the differences between the “routes” of feminism in academia and its route
to the women’s movement? China should be concerned with both routes.
• A dialogue is needed urgently between the Marxist theory and the theory of gender
and other feminisms in China.
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Seema Arora Jonsson provided another kind of comparative picture for thinking about
knowledge production in her account of a women’s organization in Orissa, India and a
rural Swedish women’s network.
Her presentation juxtaposed methodological and
political questions in sometimes unanticipated ways. The context of developmentalism
and grassroots organizing in the Indian context seemed to provide the means for more
radical forms of protest and action in a backward region like Orissa, compared to the
different dilemmas for women and men in rural Sweden, struggling to deal with norms of
gender equality in an “advanced” and liberal nation.
Other papers also provided interesting perspectives on issues of comparison. In her
presentation, Kumkum Sangari looked at certain problematic forms of international
knowledge production. The first part focused on a recent study of the practice of Sati
(widow immolation) in India by a French scholar to see how the study marginalized
feminist work on the subject and privileged Indological modes of analysis. She also
examined certain problems in international human rights discourses on women and their
mode of “stigmatizing” particular human rights violations in different regions of the
world. From a different perspective altogether, Fereshteh Ahmadi traced different kinds
of feminisms in relation to Islam. She emphasized the conceptual and substantive error in
generalizing about Islam – indeed, the specificities of Iran make its Persian versions of
Islam quite different from others, even its more “secular” neighbour Turkey. As the
result of some recent re-interpretations of the Quran, for instance, it has become possible
for some feminists in Iran to engage in contextual critiques of the text itself and so open it
up to wider analysis than was possible when it was considered to be beyond modification.
Yet another paper – by Margaret Gärding – explored some of the problems of crosscultural interaction as these are exemplified in interpersonal communication among
international aids agencies and their workers. Using tools of social psychology and
theories of power, she offered a critique of the paternalism inherent in much of the new
language of “partnership”, including use of notions of “unreliability” of recipients to
deflect questions of power from development workers and donors.
Other papers focused more closely on specific genres and disciplines involved in the
feminist knowledge production. These included the fields of the law, oral history and
history. Ranjita Biswas’ presentation examined how knowledge of sexual violence is
produced through the law in the structure and procedures associated with establishing a
case of violence. In particular, the paper focused on the interrelationships between
medicine and the law, in terms of who qualifies as a victim, what makes her testimony
more or less believable and so on. Kavita Punjabi examined both the ethical and
epistemological issues involved in spoken forms of knowledge compared to the written
text, and their susceptibility for being treated as without sufficient foundation or veracity.
She divided her presentation between the well known case of Rigoberta Menchu (the
Mayan Nobel prize winner who was subsequently accused of false testimony), and her
own work in recovering the oral histories of women who were part of the Tebhaga
struggle in West Bengal, and the differences between cultures and norms – urban-rural,
individual-collective, academic-grassroots, throw up challenges for women’s studies
today. In her paper, Janaki Nair discussed the troubled relationship between feminism
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and history, pointing to the ongoing marginalization of significant feminist scholarship by
mainstream historians in the Indian context. How can historians remain so impervious to
feminist insights without requiring anything so political as a backlash?
In the course of this panel - questions of location, of institutions of various kinds (ranging
from the disciplines of the university to newer sites such as NGOs and donor agencies as
well as grassroots organizations) – were examined for how they generate and block
feminist knowledges. The implications for thinking about gender justice are quite far
reaching and point to how crucial it is to think of the need for greater gender justice in the
production of knowledges about women, which in turn would impact on disparities
between women.
Altogether, the session generated much comment and debate. For example, Min was
asked whether in feminist research in China there was contestation of “gender” itself. She
was also asked whether the ACWF was part of the Communist Party. Min explained that
in China, researchers are using different names, some using sexual identity, but others say
that this is not appropriate for China. On the ACWF, she states that the organisation
continues to refer to itself as a Marxist organization. She also argues that Chinese
organizations should develop their own issues not those directed by the funding source.
In one state where ACWF is working, there are 50 different ethnic minorities. It is
impossible to do gender training alone and understand these different cultures. One must
conduct research to develop appropriate instruments for gender and development.
Globalization is changing China – before Beijing controlled everything, now some states
are developing on their own, through donor funding or economic changes.
Similarly Ranjita Biswas received many comments. It was pointed out that the author
had drawn attention to an important area that is in need of new reflections. But the author
has focused only on the legal arena, whereas the production of knowledge including that
of sexual violence takes place outside that space. Commentators urged the researchers to
continually debate sexual violence, but within a broader framework than the author has
done. In addition, the author had pointed to the biases in the legal system, but the
epistemology of the oppressed has to continually be contested. The feminist movement
(in India) does not subscribe to the position that a woman who claims to have been
subject to sexual violence must be believed. Finally, since sexual violence has had a
thirty-year research history in India, it is necessary that later researchers take that history
into account. Ranjita responded that her interest is to show how scientific and legal
knowledge is produced – at the interface of theory and action. Her concern, she argues,
is in the methods and concepts employed and how these are woven into a sexual violence
case to arrive at a verdict. Another comment contends that what the author is looking at is
jurisprudence rather than legal knowledge. In addition, the author uses the word sexual
violence to refer to rape, when the former is vague and still does not exist in the Indian
system. Ranjita responds that if she uses rape instead of sexual violence, she will be
ignoring the other forms of sexual violence, and this is another forms of reproducing
knowledge.
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Many more comments and questions were directed at Ranjta’s paper. One of these was
whether the inquisitional system – where the judge takes a greater role in the verdict –
would be better or worse for addressing sexual violence. . Ranjita responds that she does
not know how the inquisitional system works and therefore cannot answer the question.
She was commended for the potential radical opportunity her research presents on the
question of medical evidence in rape cases. After all, although the courts rely on medical
assessments, they in fact seldom use them to prove whether rape has occurred or not. In
such a situation, one wonders what the point is for submitting the medical assessments in
rape cases. The commentator agrees with the comment above that the author is concerned
with jurisprudence rather than legal knowledge. If, as with sexual harassment, the focus is
shifted towards the impact on women, a whole new area will open up. The remainder of
the discussion centred on the pending harassment bill in the Indian Congress and the
usefulness of using jurisprudence instead of legal knowledge.
A comment on Fereshteh Ahmadi’s paper opened an interesting problematic in feminism.
The commentator agrees with the author’s reference to feminism as a plural phenomenon.
However, the recognition of plurality should not have to mean an inclusion of the socalled “conservatives” in the feminists fold, she contends. Fereshteh agrees with the
comment, up to a point. She asserts however, that conservative feminism also needs to be
recognised. Even if the conservatives do not support gender equality, which would entail
changing the social structure, they do support the advancement of women in areas such as
access to education and employment. Another challenging question points to how the
same process has occurred with Christianity and wonders whether it is possible to
compare the two. Yet another question is whether Iran feels the need to address the
negative image of Muslims (i.e. in the post- 9/11 world) despite the fact that it has not
been colonized and is not trying to defend a Muslim identity? Fereshteh explains that
Iranian Islamic feminists are in contact with women of other Muslim countries. In most
Arab countries, people identify themselves first and foremost by their Islamic identity.
Meanwhile, Iranians identify themselves by their profession, their country, their sex.
Iranians use Islam as a political instrument. Tehran and Istambul have the same number
of inhabitants, 12 million, but Tehran has 500 mosques and an Islamic state whereas
Turkey has 2500 mosques and a secular state. Another question posed to Fereshteh is
whether the current Islamic feminism in Iran, which focuses on reinterpreting the sacred
texts, is a marginal movement or if it is part of the mainstream? Fereshteh explains that
the women’s movement is no longer merely an upper-class women’s affair. Among the
university students, almost 70 % are women. Women are in all forms of employment.
Islamic feminism has been able to change many laws because it is not just made up of
elite groups, but rather includes ordinary women too. It has been able to make change
because it is not merely talking at a theoretical level but rather providing a critique of the
Qur’an. It has also changed people’s relationship with Islam - enabling them to distance
themselves from the institutionalised religion.
The first commentator considers the Seema Arora-Jonsson’s presentation extremely
refreshing because it challenged the stereotypical way in which women are conceived in
the Third World and in the North. It is possible that is could make it appear as though
feminist politics are easier to do in India than in Sweden, because the Indian context is
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shaped by the discourse of developmentalism. Arora-Jonsson responds perhaps because
she came as an outsider, she could see how unequal things were in the Swedish context
and that there was little space for feminist politics. But it is an outsider’s perception of
what is happening. The second commentator took up the issue of how the development
discourses have benefited women’s groups in the public domain, but when it comes to
transactions and behaviours in the household, they have not provided the necessary tools.
For example, the development discourse has not enabled or empowered women to
negotiate in the personal spaces, such as the household, religious spaces, or in their local
community. Interfacing the two is a critical zone if women to engage in the wider spaces.
Seema responds that women in her study were taking up issues of gender-based violence,
and it is possible that women can change personal spaces. But there is no direct link from
empowerment or changes in the political or public space back to the personal space. The
final commentator explained that the Indian context is characterized by extreme poverty
that cannot be compared to the Swedish context. Did you share your observations of the
group in Sweden with the group in India and vice versa, Arora-Jonsson was asked? She
responds that she did not share her observation with the group in India but she did with
the group in Sweden. Women in Sweden did not see their situation as similar to that of
women in India. However, they did begin to rethink the modern woman that was fostered
by their mothers and the older women in their community who had built up their
community, and take into account ideas that come from outside.
3. Concluding Comments
Altogether 39 papers were presented at the conference. Following the presentation of all
the papers, the wrapping up session discussed the main points raised throughout the
conference. Many issues that concern women - from the problematic definition of
concepts such as citizenship, gender and transition to the United Nations policies on
female migrants, the effects of globalisation on politics, law enforcement, the changing
conditions in the production of goods and services, and the movement of labour were
debated. The impact of these global changes on women have great differences as well as
some striking similarities, all depending on circumstances. The conference called for
vigilance about the concepts used by researcher to ensure that women’s interests are not
inadvertently subdued in other types of group interests.
A running theme of the conference was the symmetric and/or asymmetric convergence of
globalisation and local conditions across many societies and countries of the South.
These themes appear repeatedly whether the circumstances are at the international
decision-making bodies such as the UN or state governments, agencies and in some cases
at the local community level. The conference contends that the emergence of concurrent
and conflicting processes of globalisation have an acute impact on women’s agency.
The proceedings of the conference point to a linkage between the interests of the
globalising forces in the production sector and the political national elites in breeding
gender disparities at the local level. While the globalisation of production might seem
beneficial to the national elite in many countries of the South, the process is also creating
new challenges for women, especially in poor or marginalised groups. The process
supports political and social consolidation of the interests of the elite above those of
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ordinary men and women. Indeed, even international organisations which are accredited
with the defence of women’s interest seem sometimes to exclude the interests of women
in their practices. The economic processes in globalisation have a tremendous impact in
how local communities and national governments react to women’s assertion of their role
and rights. In most of the countries represented at the conference, upholding the interests
of the national elite in the globalising process has also meant the retreat of the state in the
public sector. This has meant an ever-shrinking provision of basic services and utilities
essential for survival and security of the person. The consequence has been the escalation
of all forms of violence. Whether in the few cases women are themselves actors in the
perpetration of violence as in the case of inter- and intra-communal wars; or where the
state is confronting some insurgent group, the wars had been visited upon women through
rape and other abuses. In a nutshell, globalisation has not been only a positive process for
women. Indeed, in the neo-liberalist programmes it encourages and supports, it has a
devastating impact on women, whose primary interest is, improved basic utilities,
security of their person, and livelihoods.
An important benefit of the conference was the meeting of individual feminist activists,
researchers and their networks. The face-to-face dialogue afforded researchers on one
hand and activists on the other, an opportunity to appreciate the challenges each face in
their field of activity. On the one hand, is the researchers’ seeming preoccupation with
the definition of concepts and their attempts to excavate the underlying issues that fuel
women’s discrimination. On the other, is the dilemma the activist faces when confronted
with the reality of either bread and butter questions of the dispossessed or an armed force.
In this dialogue, in these seeming differences of the two groups of feminists an
understanding emerges of a mutual need of each other. Consequently, the conference
ended on a note of friendship and plans of cooperation between researchers and activist in
the future.
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